Soviet Union as well as to China, he hoped for a more friendly reception than he had found in the West. The Soviets, however, had so adequate a foothold among Koreans in the U.S.S.R. and Manchuria that they felt no compunction to aid that exile faction least amenable to Soviet control. In any case, the U.S.S.R. was by then more concerned with Nazi Germany than with imperial Japan.
Rhee’s visit to Moscow was not unlike his unsuccessful representations elsewhere, except that it showed him willing to solicit even Communist aid on behalf of the Provisional Government. His visit to Switzerland was a turning point in his personal life, however, for there he met Francesca Donner, whom he married the following year. Rhee returned to the United States to make arrangements for Miss Donner to enter the country. He was fifty-nine and she thirty-six when they were married on October 8, 1933. It would be the lot of Francesca Rhee, the daughter of an Austrian nobleman, to become the first lady of an Asian nation which she had never seen.
The following year was largely taken up with a speaking tour of the United States. Rhee had become increasingly isolated from the Provisional Government, as a result of personality clashes, geographic separation, and the fact that the Provisional Government had its hands full with internal troubles. In 1936, however, a number of hitherto rival factions in China merged into a conservative Korean National Front with its headquarters in Hangchow, thus maintaining a semblance of unity under rightist leadership.
In 1939, with friction among Koreans in Hawaii making his church and school endeavors increasingly difficult, Rhee moved to Washington. There he took advantage of the growing popular concern over Japan to publish his own indictment of the Japanese, Japan Inside Out. As was to be expected, the book was a long resume of Japanese encroachments in Korea. But in addition it contained early symptoms that Rhee had come to view himself as a Korean Moses. His description of the abortive independence movement of the 1890’s left little doubt as to whom Rhee regarded as its driving force:
“The conservative Korean government, having a childlike faith in [its treaties with foreign powers] opened everything to the Japanese without preparing for national defense. It was in 1895, soon after the close of the Sino-Japanese war, that I came to realize the danger and undertook to inform the nation of the imminent danger to our national existence. I started the first daily newspaper in Korea, through the columns of which I did all I could to cause our people to know what the Japanese and the Russians, the two rival forces, were trying to do. In cooperation with many patriotic leaders, we [sic] succeeded in arousing a sufficient number of people to join with us in inaugurating a national defense program.”4
Moreover, for all of Rhee’s studies in international law at Harvard and Princeton, he continued to regard the old treaty of amity between the United States and Korea as a guarantee of American protection:
“If [the Korean emperor’s appeal for U.S. protection against Japan] was really foolish, the Koreans were not alone responsible for it. The United States Senate and the President of the United States, as well as the State Department, all gave their approval and affixed their signatures to the treaty, thus making it a law of the United States. . . . This is, indeed, a blemish on the glorious pages of American history. Korea paid heavily for being a peace-loving nation and putting her trust in the sanctity of international treaties.”5
Finally, although Rhee provided some documentation for his charges of a Japanese blueprint for world conquest, he offered only generalities when it came to the question of how to meet the Japanese threat. While denying that he espoused preventive war, Rhee called upon the United States to check Japan “before it is too late.” But how Japan was to be checked in 1939 short of war is never made clear, and when it came to Japan’s exact intentions, Rhee’s crystal ball was no better than that of the average American. “The open Japanese threats of war against the United States are only a bluff,” he wrote. “They know too well that it would be suicidal for them to plunge into war with the United States while Great Britain and China are menacing the Axis lineup from both ends.”6
The concept of deterrence through preparedness was fundamental with Rhee, and his later demands as president of South Korea that the Free World unite against communism would only echo his earlier “program” to check Japan. The stalemate in the Korean War further convinced Rhee that if sufficient force could be brought to bear, his enemies would back down or quit.
Rhee’s get-tough policy was suitable for situations in which the vital interests of a major power were clearly threatened. Had it been adopted by England and France in the 1930’s, the rise of Hitler might have been forestalled. But in seeking allies for Korea, Rhee made no allowance for the unwillingness of any power to commit itself outside its areas of interest; indeed, he regarded the United States as having committed a breach of faith in not having protected his homeland against the Japanese. It is ironic that the threat of communism would bring about Rhee’s wildest hope: that the United States become the guarantor of Korean independence.
5: The
TO THOSE few Americans who thought at all of Korea in the frantic days following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Hermit Kingdom was merely an early victim of Japanese aggression, a nation which would presumably be restored to freedom after the defeat of the Japanese. But to Syngman Rhee, Pearl Harbor was a dream come true. With the irrepressible optimism of the political exile, he felt certain that Pearl Harbor, by unleashing America’s industrial might against the Axis powers, foreshadowed the defeat of Japan.
America’s entry into the war, which shifted the center of resistance against Japan from China to the United States, bolstered Rhee’s prestige within the Korean independence movement at a time when his stock had reached a low point. In 1940, a new amalgamation of factions within the Provisional Government had resulted in the formation of the Korean Independence Party, under the leadership of Kim Koo. Shortly thereafter, Kim formally supplanted Rhee as president of the Provisional Government. But now events had placed Rhee in a position more favorable than that of his rivals in Shanghai and Chungking. Korea’s redemption would come not through China but from across the Pacific.
In Washington, Rhee refused to recognize his formal demotion but pressed the cause of the Provisional Government as its Washington representative. When his protestations elicited nothing more than expressions of sympathy from American officials, Rhee condemned them as stupid, pro-Japanese, or pro-Russian. To Secretary of State Hull he wrote:
“The Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea is the sole representative of the Korean people, whether they are resident in Korea proper, Manchuria, Siberia, China or elsewhere, and regards itself, on the basis of the treaty of l882, negotiated between the Government of Korea and the Government of the United States, not as a free movement . . . but as the only government agency of Korea in existence.1
Rhee’s claims were, of course, unfounded, The old treaty of friendship between the United States and the Korean monarchy had nothing to do with the American choice regarding which Korean government to recognize. Though it was later demonstrated that it had considerable support within Korea, the Provisional Government had not in any sense of the word been chosen by the Korean people. Rhee’s greatest obstacle, however, was that Korea itself did not enter into Allied war plans and therefore conjured up no sense of immediacy among American officialdom. In early 1942, the Pacific War Council discussed the possibility of granting some form of recognition to the Provisional Government, but decided to postpone any action until it might be more useful in arousing Korean opposition to Japan. As for regular diplomatic recognition, the U.S. position was summarized in reference to Korean participation in the post-war United Nations conference.
“The United Nations which are represented at the United Nations Conference on International Organization all have legally constituted governing authorities whereas the ‘Korean Provisional Government’ and other Korean organizations do not possess at the present time the qualities requisite for obtaining recognition by the United States as a governing authority. The ‘Korean Provisional Government’ has never exercised administrative authority over any part of Korea, nor can